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Of course I predicted it. It’s like talking to Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door. The idea that you fully understand their entire belief structure, have done your

by vsw02 5y ago

Of course I predicted it. It’s like talking to Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door. The idea that you fully understand their entire belief structure, have done your homework on it out of respect (seriously, I have), and ultimately reject it anyway is puzzling to adherents of most belief systems, so they tend to revert to explaining it a different way out of a suspicion that you don’t get it. I’ve probably heard over a hundred different metaphors for why I should care about what my users do with my software at this point and it’s still a level of arrogance I’m not willing to introduce to my engineering. All I can say is oh well, I guess.

ldarby 5y ago
> they tend to revert to explaining it a different way out of a suspicion that you don’t get it. I think that's because, in my experience (outside of HN), many people really don't get it. They say something like "this proprietary software did something nasty again" without knowing that the GPL exists or that it's effectively impossible for GPL'ed software to do nasty things. Hence, it is always worth explaining the GPL and its values to them. It's not always easy to see when someone already understands the values and just disagrees with them.